The Lobby and the Israeli
Invasion of Lebanon:
Their Facts and Oursby James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2006

All
the national, state and local Jewish organizations have launched a $300
million fundraising and propaganda campaign in support of the 21 Jewish
civilians and 116 soldiers killed during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
(but not the 18 Israeli Arabs who were excluded from Jews-only bomb
shelters). As adjuncts of the Israeli foreign office not a single one of
the 52 organizations which make up The Presidents of the Major Jewish
Organizations in the US voiced a single public criticism of Israel’s
massive destruction of civilian homes, hospitals, offices, supermarkets,
refugee convoys and churches and mosques, and the deliberate killing of
civilians, UN peacekeepers and rescue workers with precision bombing. On
the contrary the entire Jewish lobby echoed in precise detail the Israeli
lies that the Lebanese deaths were caused by the Lebanese resistance’s
“use of human shields,” despite the total devastation of the heavily
populated southern suburbs of Beirut, completely out of range of any
Hezbollah rockets.

The
magnitude of the Jewish Lobby’s cover-up of Israel’s massive military
assault can be measured in great detail.

The
Israeli Armed Forces (IDF) launched 5,000 missiles, five-ton bunker-buster
bombs and cluster bombs as well as anti-personnel phosphorus bombs each
day into Lebanon for 27 days -- totaling over 135,000 missiles, bombs and
artillery shells. During the last seven days of the war Israel launched
6,000 bombs and shells per day -- over 42,000, for a grand total of
177,000 over a heavily populated territory the size of the smallest state
in the US. In contrast, the Lebanese national resistance launched 4,000
rockets during the entire 34-day period, an average of 118 per day. The
ratio was 44 to 1 -- without mentioning the size differentials, the
long-term killing effects of the thousands of un-exploded cluster bombs
(nearly 50 killed or maimed since the end of hostilities) and Israel’s
scorched earth military incursion.

The
Jewish lobbyists publish the number of Israel’s civilian dead as 41,
forgetting to mention that only 23 were Jews, the remaining 18 were
members of Israel’s Arab Muslim and Christian minority who constitute
around 20% of the population. The disproportionate number of Israeli Arabs
killed was a result of the Israeli government policy of providing shelters
and siren warning systems to Jews and ignoring the security needs of its
Arab citizens. The proportion of civilian deaths to soldiers was 41 to 116
or 26% of the total Israeli dead (but if we only consider Jewish Israelis
and IDF members the proportion 23 to 116 or 16% of the Jewish dead were
civilian.) Clearly the Lebanese resistance was aiming most of its fire at
the invading IDF. In contrast, in Lebanon, of the 1,181 so far known to
have been killed, 1088 were civilians and only 93 were fighters. In other
words 92% of the Lebanese dead were civilians -- over three times the rate
of civilians killed by the Lebanese resistance and almost six times the
rate of Jewish civilians killed (the only ones who count in the Lobby’s
propaganda machine). To put it more bluntly: over 47 Lebanese civilians
were slaughtered for each Jewish Israeli civilian death.

The
Jewish Lobby’s claims of Israeli moral and military superiority in the
Middle East -- which is paradoxically combined with warnings that Israel’s
survival is at stake -- has been shredded to tatters as a result of their
failure to annihilate Hezbollah.

The
Lobby’s echoing Israeli military claims of the invincibility of the
Israeli armed forces is largely based on their ‘fighting’ against rock
throwing Palestinian school kids. Today it is clear that they are quite
vulnerable when faced with well-armed, veteran Lebanese guerrilla
fighters. According to a United Nation Report, from June 26 to August 26,
2006, Israel killed 202 Palestinians, 44 of whom were small children,
while losing one soldier; while in Lebanon, Israel lost 116 soldiers to 93
Lebanese fighters in 34 days (almost half the time period). In other
words, 157 times more Israeli’s were killed as a result of the Lebanese
invasion in one month than died in Palestine in two months (United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, August 26, 2006). The
Jewish Lobby’s propaganda campaign in the US Congress, throughout the mass
media and even in our small communities in defense of Israel’s “Summer
Rain” (raining bombs on civilians) against the Palestinians has been
thoroughly exposed as a murderous scorched earth policy by the United
Nations report and summarized in the Israeli daily Haaretz (August
27, 2006): “The [campaign] . . . is still taking a severe toll on 1.4
million Palestinians . . . thousands of Palestinians have been forced to
flee their homes following continuing IDF incursions into the Strip (Gaza)
and heavy shelling . . . the Israeli Air Force has conducted 247 aerial
assaults in Gaza…more than a million people have been left with no regular
supply of water and electricity.” The Lobby, like skilled totalitarians,
reverses the roles calling the Palestinian victims (all 202 of them)
terrorists and the executioners (the Israeli Defense Force) victims (one
dead soldier who was most likely killed by ‘friendly fire’).

George
Orwell would have written a scathing essay on the Lobby’s version of
Israel’s Animal Farm where one Israeli death is worth more than 202
Palestinians.

In
surveying the Daily Alert, the propaganda sheet prepared by the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (a semi-official propaganda arm of the
Israeli regime) for the Conference of Presidents of Major America Jewish
Organizations (CPMAJO), there is not a single mention of the fact that the
Jewish state was killing almost 10 Lebanese civilians for each fighter,
while the Hezbollah resistance was killing four times as many Israeli
soldiers as Israeli civilians (Jews and Gentiles). Not a single opinion
article, editorial or commentary reproduced by the Daily Alert,
from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The
National Telegraph, the New York Sun, USA Today,
Boston Globe, New York Times, Haaretz, The Jerusalem
Post or The Times (UK) mentions the fact that Israel’s much
ballyhooed “precision” bombing succeeded in targeting civilians, while the
Lebanese defenders’ far less sophisticated weaponry mainly hit IDF
invaders.

These
omissions by the Jewish Lobby and its members and supporters in the
Anglo-American-Israeli respectable and yellow press and electronic media
were absolutely necessary to perpetuate the myth the Israel was waging a
“defensive”, “existential” (sic) war for “survival” against Islamic
“terrorists” embodied in Hezbollah and the Lebanese National Resistance.

Was
Israel’s destruction of 15,000 homes up to Beirut and beyond to Northern
Lebanon defensive actions as the CPMAJO claims? Do these very smart, very
wealthy, highly educated Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Hopkins and
Chicago-educated apologists for the Israeli invasion really believe that
bombing hospitals, supermarkets, water treatments plants, churches and
mosques in Southern Lebanon, oil refineries and milk, food and
pharmaceutical factories in Beirut, transport, highways and bridges in
Northern Lebanon were “existential” acts essential for the survival of the
“Jewish State”? Can’t they understand the simple math presented above? The
math of genocide? Do the investment bankers, professors, dentists and
armies of rabbis of all Talmudic readings believe that Israel is the
innocent victim of aggression -- justifying the slaughter of over 90%
Lebanese civilians among those it killed? Such well-educated professionals
must know that from January 1996 to August 2006, there were weekly
incidents all along the Israeli-Lebanese border, involving Israeli raids,
killings and kidnapping of Lebanese civilians, as well as rocket firing in
both directions. Didn’t the Hollywood moguls who gave so generously to the
Israeli war machine know that Elliott Abrams, President Bush’s chief
adviser on the Middle East (stern defender of Jewish purity and intimate
collaborator with the Israeli high command) gave full support in early
summer to an Israeli plan to destroy Hezbollah, at least one month before
the border incident (see Seymour Hersh, “Watching
Lebanon,” TheNew Yorker, August 21, 2006)?

Of
course the educated elites know all about the Israeli lust for
power and dominance --unlike the good Germans in the 1940s, who claimed
they didn’t see the smoking chimneys or the grim trains -- as today images
of devastated apartments and slaughtered children were visible, easily
accessible and followed by well-publicized reports by all the human rights
groups on Israel’s crimes against humanity. They knew and supported
Israel’s crimes before and after the ceasefire -- and they proudly
chose to endorse the war, the policies and the state as true
accomplices after the fact.

Yet
the Jewish Lobby tells us that Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two soldiers
across the Israeli border was the detonator for a full-scale invasion.
Numerous sources around the world even dispute the Israeli account of a
Hezbollah cross-border attack. According to the big business US magazine
Forbes (July 12, 2006), the French news service AFP (July 12,
2006), the respectable Asia Times (July 15, 2006) and the Lebanese
police, the Israeli soldiers were captured within Lebanon in the area of
Ai’tu Al-Chaarb, a Lebanese village a few kilometers from the Israeli
border.

While
the Jewish lobby raises funds exclusively for Israeli-Jewish soldiers and
civilians, Hezbollah is engaged in a non-sectarian reconstruction program
that embraces all Lebanese communities and households, regardless of
religious or ethnic preferences. The reason is found in the fact that the
Lebanese resistance was a national movement. Contrary to the Lobby’s
propaganda, the Lebanese resistance was not exclusively Shia or even
Muslim in make-up. Israel’s invasion managed to united Lebanon’s factions
in defense of their homeland. Of the 93 Lebanese fighters killed, 20% were
from organizations other than Hezbollah, a point ignored by the Lobby’s
ideologues, who pursue Israel’s policy of pushing the US to attack Iran,
Syria and other Middle East states known to be hostile to Israel’s
hegemonic ambitions.

Consequences of Israeli War

In
both Israel and throughout the pro-Israel Jewish networks, the Israeli
military’s failure to achieve its goal of defeating and eliminating the
Lebanese resistance, particularly Hezbollah, has had a major impact. In
Israel, the major criticism of the Olmert-Perez regime and General Halutz
from both soldiers and civilians is that the government was too weak --
there was insufficient bombing, lack of sufficient ground troops and too
much concern for Lebanese civilians. The cease-fire, they complained, was
premature; the territory occupied was too limited. Likud and other parties
in the Knesset called for the bombing of Syria and Iran.

While
many US and Israeli progressives cited the “turmoil”, “dissent” and harsh
polemics in the aftermath of the war as typical of the “rough and tumble”
of Israel’s democracy, they ignored the savage militarist substance and
ultra-rightwing direction of Israeli public opinion. The “who lost the
war” polemics in Israel is basically anchored in preparations for a new,
more violent attack on Lebanon and other adversaries of Israel.

This
militaristic rage is manifested in the brutal daily assaults on the
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank where Israeli warplanes bomb homes
and ground forces assassinate and injure dozens of civilians –
“existential” murders against stone-throwing schoolboys. Israel’s rage has
affected Jewish religious notables. The Rabbinical Council of America
called for the Israeli military to re-evaluate its military rules of war
in light of Hezbollah’s “unconscionable use of civilians, hospitals,
ambulances, mosques and the like as human shields,” according to the
Jerusalem Post (August 21, 2006). The RCA and the modern Orthodox
women’s organization, Eminah, represent over one million US Jews. Their
call to maximize civilian deaths in order to lessen the “risk” to “our”
(Israeli Jewish) soldiers is in the finest spirit of Nazi chaplains egging
on the Wehrmacht’s scorched earth policy during World War II. Their
Israeli counterparts, Rabbis Eliyahu and Drori, echoed the RCA’s “delicate
criticisms” in more colorful and uninhibited terms: “Our corrupt military,
which tells us that our soldiers must endanger their lives to protect
enemy civilians, is the reason we lost the war,” according to the gentle
Rabbi Eliyahu, who sees all non-Jewish civilians opposing Israeli policy
as enemies worthy of incineration. Not to be outdone, the good Rabbi Drori
accused the rest of Western humanity of being “anti-Semites” for being
horrified at Israel’s savage destruction. “Anti-Semites demand that we use
Christian morality while our enemies act like barbarians.” (Jerusalem
Post, August 21, 2006) Apparently the killing and maiming of over a
thousand Lebanese civilians, mostly women and children, does not satisfy
this raging bull Rabbi.

Lest
one think that these US and Israeli Rabbis are simply loose cannons or
isolated psychopaths, three weeks earlier one Rabbi Dov Lior, in the
name of the Yesh Council of Rabbis (with hundreds of thousands of
Israeli followers), announced that “when our enemies hold a baby in one
hand and shoot us with the other, or when missiles are purposely aimed at
civilian populations in the Land of Israel in blatant disregard for moral
criteria, we are obligated to act according to Jewish morality, which
dictates that ‘he who gets up to kill you, get up yourself and kill him
first.’” (Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2006) The holy men of the Holy
Land are providing a post-factum religious blessing for the more than
three hundred Lebanese children killed and urging the future killing of
even more children. All this, we are told, is according to “Jewish
morality.” Surely many US Jews, especially liberals and even
conservatives, object to rabbinical fiats for the slaughter of children,
but we are deafened by their polite silence. The Lobby conveniently
ignores the Jewish morality spiel, even as it defends the “moderate”
secular line of Israeli civilian deaths resulting from Hezbollah using
Lebanese babies and old grannies as shields to commit their crimes. So we
have a raging debate among US and Israeli rabbis, and secular and
religious apologists over whether killing Lebanese civilians and children
is based on tactical military or religious-ethical considerations.

The
Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, David A. Harris, puts
to the lie the nasty bit of propaganda by US “Left” Zionists who downplay
the role of the Jewish Lobby in securing whole-hearted US White House and
Congressional support for Israel’s destruction of Lebanon. In discussing
US subservience to Israel, Harris stated, “No other nation has been
prepared to define such an intimate relationship with Israel in all
bilateral spheres -- from arms sales, foreign aid and intelligence-sharing
to a free-trade zone, scientific co-operation and diplomatic support. No
other nation has the capacity, by dint of its size and stature, to help
ensure Israel’s quest for a secure and lasting peace ]sic] . . . In the
recent conflict with Hezbollah, once again the United States demonstrated
its willingness to stand by Israel, provide vital support and withstand
the pressure of many US allies who would have wished for an earlier end to
the fighting even if it meant keeping Hezbollah largely intact and in
place . . . Whatever the primary factor, there can be no doubt that
American Jewry is an essential element of the equation (yoking the US to
Israel). This is all the more reason why American Jewry need to work day
in and day out to ensure that the mutually beneficial link [sic] goes from
strength to strength.” (Jerusalem Post, August 25, 2006)

In plain English,
the Jewish networks and lobbies were able to secure 98 percent support
from Congress for a resolution supporting Israel’s invasion of Lebanon,
even as 54 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of Republicans favor a
policy of neutrality as opposed to alignment with Israel. (Times-Bloomberg
Poll, July 25-August 1, 2006, published in the Jewish Telegraph Agency
-- August 15, 2006) The Lobby convinced, pressured and threatened the
White House to prolong the Israeli terror bombing as Harris so proudly
announced. The Jewish Lobby does work “day in and day out” to make sure
that Israel can ethnically cleanse Palestine, drop five-ton bombs on
Lebanese apartment buildings, bulldoze villages and isolate the US from
even its closest allies at the expense of the US taxpayers, our democratic
ideals and our sovereignty. And the American Jewish Committee has the
chutzpah (arrogance) to say that it is “our mutually beneficial link.” Now
that is a bit of political dishonesty!